by Isaac Hooke
Before any of my kids were born, I used to want to be a father more than anything. And I swore I wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes my own father had made. The long absences. The gambling. The drinking.
And yet here I was. At least I didn’t have the latter two vices. But the absence part, well, that was something out of my control.
It felt wrong to be enjoying this work so much, and to be putting myself in the line of fire as often as I did. I risked having my children grow up without a father—there was no greater absence than death.
I hadn’t yet told my wife I’d been shot. I wasn’t sure what I’d say when she saw the scars. Tepin knew I had to make sacrifices so that the kids could grow up in the UC. But seeing those bullet and shrapnel scars would terrify her.
Maybe I’d make an appointment with a good plastic surgeon or rejuvenist in Gliese 581 before I got back. Sometimes small deceits were necessary in a marriage, if not for your own sanity, then for the sanity of your partner.
“Switch to Bicentennial Man’s POV,” TJ announced over the squad-level comm, bringing me out of my head. His voice was a mix of trepidation and excitement. “You’re not going to believe what the robos are seeing.”
Bicentennial Man was the nickname of one of the Centurion scouts. The other’s monicker was Lead Foot.
I switched to Bicentennial Man’s perspective.
The light from the Centurion illuminated a vast cavern with a floor cloaked in a dense mist. Black columns with flaring tops and bottoms erupted from the mist. Long blankets of translucent silk draped the space between the columns like spider webs.
Small slugs, looking like mech-sized larva, were scattered throughout the cavern and clung to the silk and columns in random locations. Those hanging from the pillars seemed to be devouring the rock, while those on the silk appeared to be creating the diaphanous substance, issuing white strands from their mandibles.
So far, none of the slugs paid any attention to the Centurions. Apparently the embedded EM emitters were working. Then again, maybe they would have ignored the robots either way.
“What the bloody hell are those things?” Facehopper sent.
TJ answered. “Remote scans are inconclusive, but they seem to be miniature slugs, minus any attached crabs. As for the silk, it appears to be organic, but nothing like spider or worm silk. The substance is actually emitting an EM field of some kind. If I had to guess, I’d say the structure was some kind of communications relay. Sort of like one of our own InterPlaNet nodes. Used by the Queen, or whatever else leads these things, to maintain contact with her troops. Bear in mind, this is a highly uneducated guess”
“Maybe we should burn it,” Bomb sent, sounding eager.
“No,” Facehopper returned. “I don’t want to risk alerting the enemy to our presence this early in the game. TJ, have the Centurions hold their positions until we arrive.”
We reached the chamber and proceeded forward in single file, keeping close to Bicentennial Man and Lead Foot. The dense mist blanketed the feet of our mechs to the ankles while swallowing the smaller Centurions to the waists.
The silk slugs didn’t pause or make any movements to indicate they were aware of our passage. Either the EM emitters we harbored convinced the enemy we were on their side, or the things were blind and deaf. Anyway, the true test of the emitters would come when we encountered actual Phants.
Our Centurions did their best to choose a silk-free path through the columns. At one point, however, the wispy substance unavoidably blocked the way forward. The silk there was devoid of any slugs, so Facehopper authorized Bomb to clear it.
Bomb flicked his ATLAS arms through the barrier and the silk fell apart immediately. Other nearby slugs didn’t seem to care, and we crossed the rest of the area without issue, leaving the dense mist and mysterious slugs behind as the cavern became a tunnel once more.
In the next cavern, we encountered another class of alien entity, again by proxy at first.
We all switched to the perspective of either Lead Foot or Bicentennial Man the instant the map indicated a change in the tunnel scale. I used Bicentennial Man’s POV.
The cavern the Centurion stood in reminded me of a sepulcher because I spotted several metallic, coffin-like boxes on the ground, positioned in apparently random locations. Around these boxes resided hundreds of strange entities. The best description I could think of was a man-of-war, adapted for land. They were these bladder-like forms with long tentacles running out of their bodies on all sides. Those tentacles enwrapped the metal boxes and intertwined with the appendages of neighboring entities; bolts of electricity visibly pulsed along the skin, passing to and from each creature. As I watched, some of the creatures shifted subtly, moving a pace to the left or the right, resettling.
“The Observer Mind?” Facehopper sent. “Looks like a big neural network.”
“No,” TJ returned. “According to the EM signal source, we have much deeper to go before we even get close to the Observer Mind. Though it’s possible this is some sort of related mind ganglion. I’m reading several micro-Slipstream positions throughout the room, one for each metallic box.”
“It’s not a brain,” I said on a hunch. “It’s a power generating station.”
I switched back to my own POV in time to catch Facehopper’s ATLAS 5 turning toward me.
“Generating power for what, exactly, mate?” he sent. “We haven’t witnessed any evidence that the crabs and slugs need power. They don’t use lights. They don’t use vehicles. Granted, captured human tech might need power, but how would the aliens actually transfer energy to the machines? You can’t just walk a robot up to these creatures and plug in a charging cable.”
“I think it’s a reserve power source for the Skull Ship,” I sent. “Humanity has developed wireless power transmitters, after all. The transmission range of our tech is limited, true, but it’s possible these aliens have achieved wireless power transmission on a more massive scale. We’ve speculated that they employ quantum-sized Slipstreams to send information across vast distances in space, after all. It’s not a huge leap of faith to imagine those same micro-Slipstreams used in power transmission.”
“I disagree,” Mauler sent. “Bogey 1 is self-contained. It doesn’t make sense to build extra power plants beneath the surface of some moon. What would be the purpose?”
“If it’s self-contained,” I responded, “then why are we down here hunting Bogey 1’s Observer Mind? And as for the purpose, who knows? Maybe the Skull Ship is using the extra power for terraforming.”
“Whatever it does, I say we fry it.” Bomb swiveled incendiary throwers into both arms.
“Same rules apply as before, Bomb,” Facehopper said over the comm. “We’re not going to do anything that might tip off the enemy.”
“Maybe we should turn back, boss?” Fret sent, sounding hopeful. “Try another route?”
Facehopper deliberated a moment. “If we backtrack, it’ll be hours before we reach the next unexplored region of the map. The first diversionary attack by the Marines is probably wrapping up by now and the alien horde will be flooding back into the warrens. We can’t risk it. We have to move forward.” Facehopper pivoted his mech to gaze down the tunnel, where the cavern and its alien entities awaited up ahead.
“Not liking it, not liking it at all,” Fret sent.
“Me neither,” Facehopper returned. “But I don’t see that we have a choice. TJ, plot a crossing using data from the Centurions. Make sure to give the new alien entities a wide berth—I don’t want our ATLAS 5s coming anywhere near them.”
The Centurions waited until our point man Bomb arrived, then the robots proceeded forward on the course TJ had plotted. The rest of us entered the cavern one by one, moving forward in single file.
I followed the three-dimensional wireframe representing the course, which my aReal overlaid onto my view. Sometimes the path bro
ught Wolfhound alarmingly close to one of those tentacles or metallic boxes, but always my mech passed by unharmed.
“TJ!” Bomb transmitted during one particularly tight section, where the electrified tentacles literally offered only half a pace of breathing room on either flank. “You sure this was the best course?”
“The best and only course, man,” TJ returned.
As I mentioned before, the tentacles and boxes seemed haphazardly scattered throughout the cavern, so that soon we moved from an area of high alien concentration to one where hardly any of the entities were present at all. We all breathed easier as the path proved clear for thirty meters.
It was my turn to carry one of the nuclear payloads. I hugged it to my chest with both arms. Ghost carried the other payload just behind me. We were positioned near the center of the squad, which was supposed to be the safest place for the payloads, at least in the tunnels. It didn’t feel all that safe in this wide cavern though, not with our flanks exposed on either side like that.
I was the first to notice something was wrong. I glanced to the left, at the nearest man-of-war, and saw that its tentacles were twitching wildly, almost like it was seizuring. Running my gaze across the other nearby entities, I realized they were all convulsing.
And then, as one, the entities began to advance, abandoning their metallic boxes. They were still twitching. I observed the motion of a subset of the aliens for a few moments, enough time for my aReal to gather the data necessary to calculate their trajectory. I overlaid the data onto my HUD map:
All of the entities were converging on Ghost and me.
Or rather, the nuclear payloads we held.
And we were only halfway across the cavern.
“Uh, Facehopper . . .” I transmitted.
“I see them,” Facehopper sent. “Hurry up, mates!”
We quickened our pace.
It soon became obvious we weren’t going to make it. Ahead was another tight section, and already the tentacled entities were moving to seal off the path.
Mauler swiveled Gatlings into each arm. “Permission to fire, Facehopper?”
“Negative. Don’t stir up the hornet’s nest. Go faster! We can make it.”
And so we went faster still, careening forward as the noose of tentacles slowly tightened around us.
Ahead, the Centurions had halted. I momentarily switched to Bicentennial Man’s viewpoint to learn why: the tentacled creatures completely blocked off our path.
“Mates,” Facehopper transmitted, “when you reach Waypoint Gamma”—a flashing waypoint appeared on my HUD, corresponding to the current position of the Centurions—“I want you to jet over the blockage.”
I switched my perspective back to Wolfhound’s in time to see the Centurions activate their jumpjets and clear the impasse.
One by one the three mechs ahead of me reached the given waypoint and leaped forward, firing their jets.
The men-of-war ignored them, intent as they were on Ghost and me.
I had to initiate the jump a little before the waypoint, because the entities had further tightened the noose, choking off the path.
As I jetted up and forward, those gyrating tentacles reached toward Wolfhound. They missed. I applied more vertical thrust just to be safe, because everywhere ahead of me sparking appendages were flinging upward.
“Watch those tentacles, Ghost,” I sent.
“I see ’em,” Ghost returned.
On my HUD map, I saw his green dot jetting across the cavern not far behind me.
I kept an eye on my jet fuel levels. My fuel burn was roughly three times that of the others because of the added weight of the nuclear payload. But I had way more than enough to make the jump.
Clearing the outer fringe of the man-of-war entities, I landed on the far side of the cavern and dashed forward, proceeding into the next tunnel after Facehopper’s mech. I was glad to get the hell out of there. My HUD told me Ghost and the rest of the squad were close behind. Their vitals seemed fine.
As we jogged forward, leaving behind that forsaken place, Facehopper had everyone give a quick sitrep—situation report. Everyone was good. No one had fired at the enemy. No one had taken any damage. Trace, our current drag man, reported no sign of pursuit.
We’d survived our first trial unscathed.
Even so, we didn’t stop running.
After about twenty minutes into the new tunnel, Facehopper called a halt, ordering a change of porters.
Ghost and I set down our respective payloads, glad for the rest. Mauler and Facehopper assumed portage duties and we proceeded forward at a more moderate pace. The threat seemed gone, but even so Facehopper had one of the Centurions, Lead Foot, take up the drag position. Privately I thought we should have placed a Centurion in the back from the start, but who was I to question our leading petty officer’s squad arrangements? My relationship with him was rocky enough as it was.
We continued onward.
The tunnel sloped ever downward. The darkness seemed oppressive, eating up the light from our headlamps, drowning us, choking our morale.
Spirits, protect us from—
I cursed myself for a fool. There were no spirits. Praying to nonexistent beings was pointless. Physics didn’t allow spirits . . . even the Phants, the closest thing to spirits I’d ever encountered, were not actually ghosts. They might seem supernatural. They might seem magical. But in the end, they could be explained away by the laws of physics. True, this would involve laws humanity did not know yet, but I had no doubt physics would prevail in the end.
Although if I did believe in spirits, the nearest match to a Phant in my culture would be a Chindi. According to Navajo beliefs, a Chindi was the ghost left behind after a person died, and it contained everything bad or inharmonious about that person. Touching a Chindi led to death.
Yes, a prayer couldn’t hurt. Just a small one.
Spirits, protect us from evil. Help us get through this. Help humanity win the day.
We reached a fork and dispatched Bicentennial Man down the rightmost path. Before the Centurion moved out of signal range, TJ determined the fork led away from the Observer Mind. Facehopper had TJ recall Bicentennial Man, directing him to send it down the opposite fork instead. We followed.
“Switch to Bicentennial Man’s POV,” TJ sent urgently a few minutes later.
I tuned to the robot scout’s perspective.
Ahead, the tunnel had opened into a wider chamber. The black walls ceded in areas to striking crystalline structures of green and yellow. From the floor, translucent hexagons jutted upward at different heights, glittering with light reflected from Bicentennial Man’s headlamp. It was beautiful.
Or at least it would have been, if not for the puddles of glowing, blue liquid scattered about the area.
“Phants,” Ghost sent.
CHAPTER THREE
Rade
I floated in orbit above the moon Tau Ceti II-b. The white-blue clouds of the gas giant Tau Ceti II roofed the heavens. Ahead, the black cranial shape of the Skull Ship, Bogey 2, blotted out the stars.
Glancing down, I saw the distant plains of the moon between my boots. Where the Skull Ship touched the surface, black veins emanated outward in a circular pattern, overtaking those green fields, poisoning them for hundreds of klicks around.
Three hours earlier I had performed a jumpsuit drop from the delivery shuttle on the far side of the moon. It had taken all that time for my orbital speed to bring me and the rest of the squad around the moon and into range.
We were in plain view of the Skull Ship. Our thermal signatures would be obvious at that range, as would, hopefully, our Phant-mimicking signatures. I could feel the EM emitter digging into my back at that very moment. The haphazardly installed metal beam felt extremely uncomfortable, but if it tricked the Phants and other aliens into believing we were one of them,
I’d endure it. I had coped with far worse, after all.
I had one gloved hand wrapped around the handhold of the nuclear payload beside me. The warhead was currently inactive, and equipped with an EM emitter similar to the one I wore. It was also furnished with wave-canceling tech that would in theory mask the nuclear signature. On the opposite side floated Hijak, who helped me guide it toward our target. Like the device, his jumpsuit was colored black, matching the space background.
The remaining members of Outrigger Squad were dispersed around us within the confines of an imaginary sphere a hundred meters in diameter. Chief Bourbonjack, Bender, Skullcracker, Lui, Manic, Snakeoil. Our aReals functioned as network repeaters, boosting the range of our individual comm units to compensate for the interference produced by the Skull Ship.
As our orbit brought us nearer the target vessel, I couldn’t shake a glaring sense of insignificance. What the hell were we thinking by doing this? We were like eight mice trying to invade a skyscraper to plant a microexplosive. We might cause some damage, break some windows, but in the end the skyscraper would remain standing.
No, I reminded myself. You set that microexplosive in the right spot, you bring the whole building toppling down.
We could do this. We had to try, at least, because the alternative—sitting back and waiting for the enemy to destroy humanity’s colony worlds one by one—wasn’t going to cut it.
“Approaching Event Horizon,” Snakeoil sent.
The Event Horizon had nothing to do with black holes. Metaphorically, it was the point of no return, roughly seventy-four klicks from Bogey 2 at this vector. The maximum extent of the bogey’s coronal weapon, known as the Terminal Range, was farther away than that, and varied based on the approach, though in theory we could turn back and escape even while within that range, if we had enough warning. But after we reached the seventy-four-klick mark, we were committed and there was no going back.
